Grounded theory in software engineering research: a critical review and guidelines

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dc.contributor.authorStol, Klaas-Jan
dc.contributor.authorRalph, Paul
dc.contributor.authorFitzgerald, Brian
dc.contributor.funderScience Foundation Irelanden
dc.contributor.funderEnterprise Irelanden
dc.contributor.funderRoyal Irish Academyen
dc.date.accessioned2018-10-24T11:21:55Z
dc.date.available2018-10-24T11:21:55Z
dc.date.issued2016-05
dc.date.updated2018-10-03T20:49:09Z
dc.description.abstractGrounded Theory (GT) has proved an extremely useful research approach in several fields including medical sociology, nursing, education and management theory. However, GT is a complex method based on an inductive paradigm that is fundamentally different from the traditional hypothetico-deductive research model. As there are at least three variants of GT, some ostensibly GT research suffers from method slurring, where researchers adopt an arbitrary subset of GT practices that are not recognizable as GT. In this paper, we describe the variants of GT and identify the core set of GT practices. We then analyze the use of grounded theory in software engineering. We carefully and systematically selected 98 articles that mention GT, of which 52 explicitly claim to use GT, with the other 46 using GT techniques only. Only 16 articles provide detailed accounts of their research procedures. We offer guidelines to improve the quality of both conducting and reporting GT studies. The latter is an important extension since current GT guidelines in software engineering do not cover the reporting process, despite good reporting being necessary for evaluating a study and informing subsequent research.en
dc.description.sponsorshipIrish Research Council (New Foundations Scheme 2014); Enterprise Ireland (grant IR/2013/0021 to ITEA2-SCALARE (www.scalare.org)); Royal Irish Academy (Charlemont Award Programme)en
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.description.versionAccepted Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationStol, K.-J., Ralph, P. and Fitzgerald, B. (2016) 'Grounded theory in software engineering research: a critical review and guidelines', ICSE '16: Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering, 14-22 May, Austin, Texas, 2884833: ACM, pp. 120-131. doi: 10.1145/2884781.2884833en
dc.identifier.doi10.1145/2884781.2884833
dc.identifier.endpage131en
dc.identifier.isbn978-1-4503-3900-1
dc.identifier.startpage120en
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/7041
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherAssociation for Computing Machinery (ACM)en
dc.relation.ispartof38th International Conference on Software Engineering
dc.relation.projectinfo:eu-repo/grantAgreement/SFI/SFI Research Centres/13/RC/2094/IE/Lero - the Irish Software Research Centre/en
dc.relation.urihttps://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2884781.2884833
dc.rights© ACM, 2016. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in ICSE '16 Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering, pp. 120-131, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2884781.2884833en
dc.subjectGrounded Theoryen
dc.subjectSoftware engineering researchen
dc.subjectSoftware engineeringen
dc.subjectGrounded theoryen
dc.titleGrounded theory in software engineering research: a critical review and guidelinesen
dc.typeConference itemen
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